Patna: Eight more flights will fly to and from the Loknayak Jayaprakash Narayan International Airport from March 27, increasing the number of flights operating from the city airport from 40 to 48.

According to airport’s assistant general manager (air traffic management) Santosh Kumar, Jet Airways would withdraw its aircraft flying on the Kolkata-Patna route from March 27. However, Go Air and Indigo would operate one flight each to Bangalore via Ranchi while Indigo would introduce one flight each to Delhi and Kolkata from March 27.

The break-up of the 24 flights include three each of Air India and Jet, five of Go Air and 13 of Indigo. These flights would also return, making the number of flights being handled by the city airport 48.

“From Wednesday onwards, at least 20 flights will land and take off from the airport till March 26,” he said on Tuesday, adding four more aeroplanes were lined up to operate return flights from March 27. “That is, the airport runway would handle 23 big aircraft and one smaller turboprop plane,” he said and added the airport had a footfall of 14 lakh travellers from January 2015 to December 2015.

Patna airport director Rajendra Singh Lahauriya said they were trying to stagger the schedule of the flights to prevent congestion for the air traffic as well as for the flyers. There would be a gap of at least t to 15 minutes between every two flights, he said.

Kumar said the airport as per the winter schedule operated from 10am to 8.30pm till Tuesday. “Now onwards till March 26, the airport would operate from 7.45am to 9.20pm,” he said and added the summer schedule to come into effect from March 27 was yet to be finalised.